The Sound of Crickets Slowed Way Down

This was recently posted at THE INDIE PEDANT and attributed to Robert Wilson (director, playwright), but the original artist/composer is Jim Wilson:

Probably the most beautiful thing you’ll hear in a long while. Beauty all around us, it just needs the right people to tweak it. I’ve nothing else to add with my clumsy words: go, just follow the link and take five minutes; take a break and really listen to it

~snip~

Tom Waits (on Robert Wilson): "Wilson, he's always playing with time. I heard a recording recently of crickets slowed way down. It sounds like a choir, it sounds like angel music. Something sparkling, celestial with full harmony and bass parts - you wouldn't believe it. It's like a sweeping chorus of heaven, and it's just slowed down, they didn't manipulate the tape at all. So I think when Wilson slows people down, it gives you a chance to watch them moving through space. And there's something to be said for slowing down the world."

Source: "Woyzeck to run at Freud Playhouse". Daily Bruin (USA), by Andrew Lee. December 3, 2002

There's also a YouTube video of the recording but it's not nearly as enjoyable, imho.

Here's an old interview via Hearing Voices with Alex Chadwick from Day to Day that introduces the Artist/Composer, Jim Wilson and explains how the recording came to Recording Artist Robert Robertson from Jim Wilson:

~snip~

Ms. HUNT: I do a lot of traveling because of our non-profit organization. We work with children on self-improvement. So I'm out on the reservations much of the time. And I had these messages saying that Robbie Robertson said to get in touch with me. So we went in studio. He said, `I want you to do whatever you feel like. And, now, these are crickets.' So I thought, oh, my goodness. I'm to accompany crickets, see?

~

Ms. HUNT: And when I heard them, I was so ashamed of myself, I was so humbled, because I had not given them enough respect. Jim Wilson recorded crickets in his back yard, and he brought it into the studio and went ahead and lowered the pitch and lowered the pitch and lowered the pitch. And they sound exactly like a well-trained church choir to me. And not only that, but it sounded to me like they were singing in the eight-tone scale. And so what--they started low, and then there was something like I would call, in musical terms, an interlude; and then another chorus part; and then an interval and another chorus. They kept going higher and higher.

~

Ms. HUNT: They were saying cricket words. I kept thinking, `Oh, I almost can understand them. It's a nice, mellow tone. And they never went off pitch until one of the interludes, where they went real crazy and they got back on again to where they were. And I know that people do not know that they're listening to crickets unless they're told that that's what that is.

~

Mr. ROBBIE ROBERTSON (Recording Artist): This was the way of it. It is a river. It is a chant. It is the medicine story. It is what happened long ago. It is a bead in a story belt. It is what has been forgotten. It is the smell of sweet grass and cedar and prayers sent to the sky, father. It is a way, a tradition, the way it was always done. It is a feeling of warmth, the sound of our voices. Listen, I am dancing beneath you.

A: It’s a mysteriously beautiful recording from, I am told, Robbie Robertson‘s label. It’s of crickets. That’s right, crickets, the first time I heard it… I swore I was listening to the Vienna Boys Choir, or the Mormon Tabernacle choir. It has a four-part harmony it is a swaying choral panorama. Then a voice comes in on the tape and says, “What you are listening to is the sound of crickets. The only thing that has been manipulated is that they slowed down the tape.” No effects have been added of any kind except that they changed the speed of the tape. The sound is so haunting. I played it for Charlie Musselwhite and he looked at me as if I pulled a Leprechaun out of my pocket.

MP3: “God’s Cricket Chrous” (sample) from God’s Cricket Chrous, an extended digitally remixed and mastered version taken from the original 1992 recording entitled “Ballad of the Twisted Hair” from the album “Medicine Songs” by David Carson and Little Wolf Band produced by Jim Wilson and released on Raven Records.

Get over her first amazement of her discovery and watch the REST of the VIDEO.

The "Choir Frogs" of HHI....are a phenomenon.....and I've heard them growing up...and listened to them since. But...this is a funny video...and "thank that little girl who heard them"....for one to view. Pass over if you can't get the Discovery to the SOUNDS.

9. I agree with what some of the commenters say, though, about the cricket recording.

I would have preferred to hear it without the track of real crickets being played simultaneously. Still, you can kind of ignore that and hear how beautiful the other track is.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font][hr]